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An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. general population is often the butt of jokes with regard to their understanding of science. A survey by the Associated Press now shows just how arbitrary and erratic the public's dissent can be. 'The good news is that more than 80 percent of those surveyed are strongly confident that smoking causes cancer; only four percent doubt it. Roughly 70 percent accepted that we have a genome and that mental illness is seated in the brain; about 20 percent were uncertain on these subjects, and the doubters were few. But things go downhill from there. Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting. And that's one of the controversial topics where the public did well. As for humanity's role in climate change, 33 percent accepted, 28 percent were unsure, and 37 percent fell in the doubter category. For a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth and a 13.8-billion-year-old Big Bang, acceptance was below 30 percent. Fully half of the public doubted the Big Bang (PDF).'"

Don't ALL scientists doubt the Big Bang and other models for the universe in the sense that they are all subject to comparison with observations? If a model conflicts with observation, the model either must be dropped or modified.

Yes but how can a person know to accept that model without first learning the model? So why poll the general public about this question when most the general public really only knows what they were told to recite in school or what they saw on Nova? "Acceptance of science" partially means do you trust what the popular theories are as presented in the media without actually doing the math or analyzing the data yourself, and it partially means have you heard of this topic before so that you even know what scientists tend to think about it.

So why poll the general public about this question when most the general public really only knows what they were told to recite in school or what they saw on Nova?

It doesn't matter to some people: whether my ancestors evolved from the same creatures as apes did or a fluffy pink unicorn farted them into existence doesn't affect their day-to-day activities (with the possible exception of the occasional worship of said fluffy pink unicorn). Unfortunately, though, it does affect who people elect to represent them, and it does affect how they lead us. The results of this survey imply that, for the foreseeable future, we are going to keep getting into situations where el

That's misrepresenting it again though. Scientists don't doubt the Big Bang or evolution. They are theories that will continue to evolve as we find more evidence. They will modify them to fit the facts. The chances of some revolutionary, completely new method of interpreting the data is very, very slim at this point.

If you have a model that explains our observation better, we're happy to hear it.

A working theory is just that. A theory. It's what people came up with based on what they can observe (the funny part is that the same is actually true for all the religious texts that explain how the world came to be. Man observed his universe and, lacking any other kind of explanation, invented some Gods that explain his observation. Sadly, these theories were not improved over time but enshrined as "holy texts").

New observations will be made over time. At least I'd hope so. These observations now either fit into the theory (now that would be great) or they don't. If they don't, it's time to fiddle with the theory. Dark matter and dark energy are indeed a bit of a puzzle since we can observe their gravitational effect, but it doesn't interact with the rest of the universe in any other way. It's just "there". There are actually quite a few ideas what could be behind it, but for a theory they pretty much all lack the "angle" to test them.

A huge issue is that even the people claiming to be intelligent can not differentiate between theory and fact. I blame our horrible education system and 'reward everyone including people that get it wrong' methodology. These same people lump inductive and deductive reasoning into one category because they are not taught the difference. Unless of course they happen to take an elective college class or by happenstance figure out the difference on their own.

It pisses me off to no end when people like you come along and start crying out that we shouldn't teach scientific consensus because "it might be wrong." Yeah, it might be fucking wrong. And there's a chance that 100,000 years of recorded history with the sun coming up in the east might be wrong - it's entirely possible that all those people were colluding in a grand conspiracy! Teach the controversy!

How do you read what he wrote and come up with that in response to it? Do you secretly believe everyone other than yourself is a moron?

It's like Slashdotters think it is weakness to try and understand what the other person believes and in what way it could be reasonable. It depends on the part where what the guy wrote must also be interpreted by the reader, and everything except rigorous mathematical formulae has multiple ways that it can be construed.

We teach what we know to the limits of our knowledge. If you don't like it, get to work disproving it. I know you'll never believe me, but if you could actually back any of your opinions with real data you could get published and become famous.

Bullshit! (to be blunt) Those countering theories and questions already abound. The Expanding Vacuum theory for the expansion of the Universe is just as scientifically sound as the Big Bang, yet if I discuss that theory I'm a "Religious nut" to the majority of people on this site. The theory is quantum not religious, go figure.

Thousands and thousands of medical people are questioning the vaccine policies we have today and looking at the rates of autism going from 1 in 1,500 in 1970 to 1 in 68 today. It

The trick about science is that we refine knowledge. Let's talk about matter. Way back when, people basically thought stuff was stuff. There was no logic to it, so they broke it into four elements. Eventually it was refined - no, it's not four. No, fire isn't an element. Look, we can split this substance out of this compound and it burns like hell! Eventually we figured out that matter is made of many, many elements. Oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and hydrogen and so many others. We said they were made of atoms. The word literally means "indivisible." The world they understood said that atoms were the smallest thing! But again, we refined. There were mysteries that we pried at until we figured out the next thing - atoms could be split! There were electrons and neutrons and protons. And we fiddled and we pried and we figured out that these particles could be broken down! Quarks dancing to a probabalistic tune that hurts to even think about.

Do you see what's happening here? Even if we figure out that our theories about quarks are wrong, it's not going to blow up the theories that depend on electrons and protons and neutrons. Each time we make a new theory, we are refining the old ones. The changes become smaller and more focused.

Sometimes something comes completely out of left field and rewrites a branch of science. But you can't base your life around such a thing happening. You just accept that you might be wrong about a few things so that you can be mostly right about a lot of things. It's better than using no logic at all and being wrong about pretty much everything.

You say you doubt the Big Bang and that's great because "it's just a working theory." If something comes along to re-write that theory, it's not going to make the universe 6000 years old for you. It'll be something small, something that fascinates mathematicians and is completely impenetrable to the rest of us.

Another thing that the American public is confused about, is the difference between the way science uses the word "theory," and the colloquial use of the word. In other words, most Americans think "theory" means "hypothesis." They hear "the theory of evolution" as "the hypothesis of evolution" because they have that idiom, "it's just a theory," (meaning mere speculation), at the front of their minds. This gives rise to specious arguments, even from otherwise intelligent people, such as, "Gravity is just a theory, too!" Better to explain the difference between an hypothesis and a theory, if you're going to say anything at all.

Although it is easy to prove that the Earth is older than 6,000 years I don't think we actually know how old the universe is. There is a new estimate that came out in 2013 so many people may not be aware of it. Before 2013 we estimated "that the Big Bang occurred between 12 and 14 billion years ago." that's uncertainty of over %16? Doesn't sound very confident to me. The good news is that the new measurement lands in the middle of the old estimate which is encouraging.

The age is constantly revised as the ability to measure increases. usually it is given an "at least" age- the technology and methodology sets a minimum date that the universe cannot be younger than. Sometimes the method gives a range, as the 12-16B one did. Now we are at 13.77B, the next may narrow it down to a date and time...

"When Sir Fred Hoyle named the theory in 1949, he was essentially being sarcastic. The astronomer disliked the theory. In two words, he diminished what is a rather complex explanation of how the universe was born. He was likely on board with most astronomers at that time. The idea that the universe could or would expand was considered ludicrous.
In 1931, Georges Lemaitre, a physicist and priest from Belgium, introduced what we now call the Big Bang Theory. Lemaitre did not call it that. Originally written

If a model conflicts with observation, the model either must be dropped or modified.

That's a little too simplistic. Often, when a model conflicts with observation, the first thing that is questioned is the observation. Is the observation accurate? Is it repeatable? Is the observation made without observer bias (intentional or otherwise)?

Much as most don’t understand the scientific definition of “theory,” you seem to be using the wrong definition of “doubt.”

Proper scientists recognize that a currently held theory is merely the best explanation we currently have for a phenomenon. In light of the evidence, they believe it’s PROBABLY MOSTLY true, but they are willing to easily accept that it isn’t if new evidence demonstrates that the older theory doesn’t explain all the facts. This isn’t “doubt” so much as “critical thinking.”

The doubters the article is referring to are people who, DESPITE the evidence, believe the theory is NOT true. Of course, most of them are painfully unaware of the evidence, they have no idea how to get to it, and they wouldn’t know how to interpret it if they had it. A lot of that is due to a broken educational system.

People say there’s “mounds of evidence” for evolution. So I’ve asked biologists if there was a compendium of major publications in the area, but I didn’t get very far. There are decent college text books, but many don’t present the original evidence; they only recount the findings from the literature. Part of the problem is that most of the “evidence” is boring tables of measurements of fossils and bones. If you won’t know what the numbers mean and how they relate, they’re just numbers. They are the evidence, but it doesn’t help they layman at all. Another part of the problem is that any summary of the evidence would leave out too much. A proper treatment of the topic would be on the order of “every peer-reviewed publication on the topic since Darwin.” This is because publications cite each other so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They make “assumptions” they don’t have to justify because someone else already did, but it’s a major undertaking to follow all the rabbit holes. Biology PhDs have trouble with that. A farmer will be hopelessly lost.

With most sciences, most people are clueless. But since they have no other reason to doubt it, this doesn’t cause any conflict. People have heard of chemistry and astronomy and mostly just consider them to be overly difficult or esoteric. It’s only biology (and some of cosmology) that makes any statements that go against things people have been taught to believe. They have no hope of understanding the science, but they do believe what their religious leaders tell them, and there is nothing intelligible to the that says otherwise.

It’s this lack of understanding of what “common folk” go through that makes me really angry with people like Richard Dawkins. As far as many people are concerned, he’s nothing more than an arrogant jerk who thinks that everyone who believes differently from him is a moron. I’ve seen dozens of videos of him on YouTube, and I never see him present evidence. He merely claims that it’s there and believes that it should just be obvious to everyone what it means. It’s like me (the computer nerd) when I was in high school who treated people unkindly because they didn’t understand computer as well as I did. Now I’m a CS professor, and I have to teach basic CS concepts to young adults. It’s VERY challenging to get some concepts across, but I work hard to do it. Dawkins is terrible at this. Perhaps if he deigns to teach an undergraduate course now and then, he might do okay, but he strikes me as one of those all-too-common lecturers who has no patience for anyone who questions what he says. His attitude reminds me of so many religious people who insist that you’ll go to hell if you don’t believe blindly exactly as they do. I guess calling someone a moron isn’t as bad as telling them they’re going to hell, but it’s a similar intolerant attitude, intolerant to people who don’t share your same training

The hubris is strong with this one. First, your "logic" and "reason" are telling you something evidence does not, and secondly you still think it matters that your boss calls you a senior systems engineer/architect. And yes, you are anti-science, as you are making assumptions about reality, claiming they are scientifically valid, and then getting upset when people point that out to you. You aren't questioning theories - you are ignoring them and putting your own hypotheses in their place, devoid of supporting evidence beyond urban myth and lazy thinking. You are the Glenn Beck of science. I hope you are happy with yourself - judging by your ego, you probably are.

All ideas may have been created equal, but they do not remain so after they've been tested.

Scientific theories are the ideas that you don't have to prove again every time you use them, because they have already been tested very thoroughly. This means a paleontologist is allowed to assume that dinosaur bones are the fossilized remains of extinct animals that lived millions of years ago. He doesn't *have* to waste his time dealing with the opinions of Young Earthers who think the world was created 7000 years ago and that Adam and Eve rode around on dinosaurs. He can just assume as factual that dinosaur fossils are millions of years old and dismiss the Adam-and-Even-on-a-dinosaur idea without further ado -- until the Young Earthers come up with proof.

And it's not the least unfair, any more than its unfair that a football team that gets the ball on their own ten yard line has more work to do to score a goal than one that gets the ball ten yards from goal. It may seem discriminatory to people who haven't been following the game up to this point, but that's because they aren't aware of the work it took to get the ball where it is.

Seeing people who are not there is certainly a deviation from the norm. I think my schizophrenic friend would trade that for a more 'normal' brain, though.

The sudden crushing certainty that you're worthless and everything you do makes your life worse is certainly a deviation from the norm. Think my depressed friends would trade that for a more 'normal' brain, though.

You are going to see that where Science conflicts with Religion, and in some cases Industry. The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality. It doesn't rule out the possibility a god exists. It only means that the current dominant Abrahamic religions are not realistic descriptions of the universe we live in.

But these religions justify how we treat other people, why certain social groups are stigmatized, and have a heavy impact on who are leaders are, what our laws are, how we raise our children, and the legitimacy of the standing governments. If the Religions aren't true, then there is no justification for the political positions of MANY people in the US Government.

In other cases, its that we are so dependent on dangerous sources of fuel, like Coal, and Petroleum, that there is the fear of an economic death spiral. So we shut our eyes and want to live in fantasy land, until it kills us.

>The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality.

What the fuck?

No. Not in the slightest.

You can certainly argue against literal interpretations of Genesis, but most Christians do not and have not believed in a literal interpretation. Biblical literalism is a very modern phenomenon, dating to the start of the Fundamentalist movement with the publication of The Fundamentals in 1910.

1910 AD. Not BC.

Only someone with no understanding of either science methodology or history would make the claim that you did.

Ad hominem, no true Scotsman, a false analogy, an appeal to authority, some God of the gaps, and straw man arguments---and that's just what I can see off the top of my head. Nice. That is some mighty fine trolling.

I don't think the survey is very fair for the question about the Big Bang. I consider myself well informed and try to keep at least a layman's understanding of scientific breakthrough. I understand the concept behind the Big Bang but cannot understand most of the hard science behind it.

Am I willing to take someone else's word just because? I don't possess the knowledge to verify their research. In my opinion, most people should be uncertain because it's not something we're ever likely to prove.

There isn't actually much evidence of the Big Bang directly, it is implied as a way to explain the red shift we see of distant galaxies (red shift = it seems like remote galaxies are moving away from us).

There's the cosmic background radiation which is considered to be the echo of the big bang as it fits and there are a few other independent things that imply the big bang. When you measure the age of the Universe using unrelated observations and coming up with close to the same numbers give or take it lends credibility to a theory.

We should be glad we are a country which does not take the word of "authority" at face value. Surely the best scientists and innovators come from that tradition. If a person does not understand a proof, they should not blindly accept it.

We should be glad we are a country which does not take the word of "authority" at face value. Surely the best scientists and innovators come from that tradition. If a person does not understand a proof, they should not blindly accept it.

That sounds like anti-conformism for anti-conformisms sake. There's nothing wrong with questioning authority, the problem is with assuming the authority is wrong just because they're an authority. There are a ton of mathematical proofs I don't understand but I blindly accept because I understand the mathematicians don't have a motive to mislead me. And even when something catches my eye and I do decide to question I'll do so aggressively but that doesn't mean I stop believing it. Whatever happens you've got

The problem is that people aren't questioning "authority" in the form of celebrities with no qualifications at all, and are unreasonably questioning authority, in the form of people who have spent decades training and studying the things they're talking about.

Doubt can often be cured by study, and people who objectively study the evidence agree that the planet is warming up, almost certainly largely because of human activity. Blind repudiation isn't cured by study, and so as people study the issue the honest doubters find strong evidence for AGW, only leaving blind repudiation. You are correct in that they are much different things.

I've never read up on it, so if you asked me I might say "I don't know". That doesn't mean I don't accept a scientific explanation for the creation of the Universe, it just means I don't know enough about it to say "Yep, that's what happened".

This is what confidence in evolution, the big bang vaccines, etc mean in the context of the poll.

Smoking causes cancerA mental illness is a medical condition that affects the brainInside our cells, there is a complex genetic code that helps determine who we areOverusing antibiotics causes the development of drug-resistant bacteriaThe universe is so complex, there must be a supreme being guiding its creationChildhood vaccines are safe and effectiveThe average temperature of the world is rising, mostly because of man-made heat- trapping greenhouse gasesLife on Earth, including human beings, evolved through a process of natural selectionThe Earth is 4.5 billion years oldThe universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang

Except, perhaps for the "mental illness" question, there's not much room for quibbling over the meaning of each, imho.

My biggest problem with surveys like these is that they public are being asked to reply with certainties that are far greater in clarity and definition than any scientist working on these fields would ever propose. And then the ignorant public are laughed at for doubting scientific truth. No cosmologist would ever state they were 100% certain that the big bang happened, and yet we laugh at the public for not being certain either.
True ignorance shows itself as certainty, either for or against supposed "scientific" principles. Being uncertain is okay, as long as you are aware of some of the options.

No. That's not a correct interpretation of the uncertainty at all. The uncertainty is based on measurements based on certain assumptions. The assumptions can still be totally wrong. We can accurately measure the expansion of space and use our models to project the expansion backwards to a starting point. Since the measurements are accurate, we can accurately estimate the age of the universe, assuming the models are correct. Our actual uncertainty is larger.

>The term Big Bang is a good metaphor, because if you were an observer outside the universe you would
It's a terrible metaphor because you can't be an observer outside the universe. It is also a terrible metaphor because the Big Bang expansion would be not really an expansion at all because everything that exists and that will ever exist is already inside the big bang, and nothing can exist on the outside, so nothing is actually getting bigger relative to starting conditions.

From Dr. David Goodstein, 1994: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg... [caltech.edu] "In the meantime, the real crisis that is coming has started to produce a number of symptoms, some alarming and some merely curious. One of these is what I like to call The Paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. The paradox is this: as a lingering result of the golden age, we still have the finest scientists in the world in the United States. But we also have the worst science education in the industrialized world. There seems to be little doubt that both of these seemingly contradictory observations are true. American scientists, trained in American graduate schools produce more Nobel Prizes, more scientific citations, more of just about anything you care to measure than any other country in the world; maybe more than the rest of the world combined. Yet, students in American schools consistently rank at the bottom of all those from advanced nations in tests of scientific knowledge, and furthermore, roughly 95% of the American public is consistently found to be scientifically illiterate by any rational standard. How can we possibly have arrived at such a result? How can our miserable system of education have produced such a brilliant community of scientists? That is what I mean by The Paradox of the Scientific Elites and the Scientific Illiterates.
The question of how we educate our young in science lies close to the heart of the issues we have been discussing. The observation that, for hundreds of years the number of scientists had been growing exponentially means, quite simply, that the rate at which we produced scientists has always been proportional to the number of scientists that already existed. We have already seen how that process works at the final stage of education, where each professor in a research university turns out 15 Ph.D's, most of those wanting to become research professors and turn out 15 more Ph.D's.
Recently, however, a vastly different picture of science education has been put forth and has come to be widely accepted. It is the metaphor of the pipeline. The idea is that our young people start out as a torrent of eager, curious minds anxious to learn about the world, but as they pass through the various grades of schooling, that eagerness and curiosity is somehow squandered, fewer and fewer of them showing any interest in science, until at the end of the line, nothing is left but a mere trickle of Ph.D's. Thus, our entire system of education is seen to be a leaky pipeline, badly in need of repairs. The leakage problem is seen as particularly severe with regard to women and minorities, but the pipeline metaphor applies to all. I think the pipeline metaphor came first out of the National Science Foundation, which keeps careful track of science workforce statistics (at least that's where I first heard it). As the NSF points out with particular urgency, women and minorities will make up the majority of our working people in future years. If we don't figure out a way to keep them in the pipeline, where will our future scientists come from?
I believe it is a serious mistake to think of our system of education as a pipeline leading to Ph.D's in science or in anything else. For one thing, if it were a leaky pipeline, and it could be repaired, then as we've already seen, we would soon have a flood of Ph.D's that we wouldn't know what to do with. For another thing, producing Ph.Ds is simply not the purpose of our system of education. Its purpose instead is to produce citizens capable of operating a Jeffersonian democracy, and also if possible, of contributing to their own and to the collective economic well being. To regard anyone who has achieved those purposes as having leaked out of the pipeline is silly. Finally, the picture doesn't work in the sense of a scientific model: it doesn't make the right predictions. We have already seen that, in the absence of external constraints, the size of science grows

when science gives me antibiotics and cell phones, i believe in it totally.
when it tells me i need to be careful about where I toss my waste products, it's a hoax.
I've found this rule to be easy to follow.

Not implying. There are a lot of willfully ignorant people that prefer their religion's tale of a 10,000 year old universe to cosmology, geology, astrophysics, and biology. but they really should be a tiny minority on par with other mental illnesses. Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.

No, it's not. That opinion is just rampant among people who view themselves as intellectually superior. And they use it to delegitimize the rest of the county, declare the debate as over, and ram their "solution" through, over the protests of the people it's supposed to help.

I suspect most of these results aren't necessarily coming about because of religion, but from basic ignorance of science. Ask questions about something the listener has no knowledge about in any meaningful way, then they either guess the answer or they give the answer that they are expected to give by society. This applies to even people who give the "correct" answer, I doubt many of those who agreed that smoking caused cancer ever read the scientific reports about it or that those who agreed with the big bang theory understand what it really is.

In other words, this is not a poll about understanding science but a poll about which viewpoints are commonly accepted or not.

And this is not use a problem in USA, you will find this around the world, but it's more fun to make fun of the US and pretend that it's more ignorant than elsewhere.Even if you will find more people in Europe that agree that climate change is caused by humans this does not mean that there are more people who read science journals over there, but that the prevailing public attitudes lean in that direction more than in the US. In the US we've got some people trying to actively sway public opinion about climate change for economic reasons, thus lots of doubt is created which is less common in Europe. For both Europe and the US the vast majority of the people have only heard about climate change from the news media anyway.

Not implying. There are a lot of willfully ignorant people that prefer their religion's tale of a 10,000 year old universe

That's both sad and amusing. Having read and learned about the Bible, I can tell you this much: the geneologies in Genesis and elsewhere are not complete and exhuastive. They do not claim to be complete and exhaustive. Nowhere in the Bible is it so much as implied that they are.

The standard ancient Hebrew practice of listing such geneologies is to list only the most famous/notable ancestors. More mediocre and lesser-known ancestors are left out deliberately because they were not considered worthy of mention. Thus there are large gaps of unknown time in the geneologies listed in Genesis and elsewhere. Nothing to the contrary is ever claimed. This fact is not even difficult to find out, except that it does depend on doing your own homework instead of letting the TV and the culture do the thinking for you. The main point of all the geneologies in the Bible is to establish that the line of King David was known (old testament) and is the same line from which Yeshua (new testament) is descended, which is important because various prophecies concerning the Messiah predicted this (e.g. Isaiah).

To infer some kind of final ultimate Age of Humanity or Age of The Earth from this is madness. The Bible never represents it as such, and anyone claiming it does is simply unfamiliar with the very book (and ancient Hebrew culture) they are claiming to understand. The Bible makes no claims whatsoever concerning things like how long ago Adam lived, how long ago Noah lived, how long ago the Flood was, etc.

Most self-described Christians don't know this and that's just plain fucking lazy, to be frank with you. You believe this is the WORD OF GOD and yet you can't be bothered to learn a few easily researched facts about it?? This is what happens when people always have some excuse for why they won't do their own thinking and their own learning.

Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.

I wish you were right. I wish it was a dwindling problem, soon to be eradicated. I want to believe that. However, conservative Christians (which should make heads explode with paradox) aren't going away anytime soon. I think you are right that most Boomers that hold these beliefs will be departing in the next decade or so. But they have grandchildren, many of whom listen. I have been teaching middle school geography for ten years. This year was the very first time I had 2 sets of parents question my teachi

Funny thing about this is that anyone actually involved in science would reject the assertion that any theory of how we came to be is a fact. They might say it's a theory with strong evidence, or a weak hypothesis (as in the case of the big bang), but would reject any assertion that one theory was a "fact."

I stopped listening when one of them wanted to argue that the King James book was God's word.

God's word? That book is a translation of a (very bad, I may add) translation of a translation of a translation. And possibly you have to add another "of a translation" in there, the jury's still out on that one.

Are you being serious? None of the things in that article are seriously under any reasonable doubt. If given a choice between true/false/unsure on any of them, then yes, the only reasonable and rational decision is 'sure'. Anything more than 0% dissent is too much. Now if you were given the option to put a confidence estimate, like say 99% sure, then yeah, I'd agree with you. You could reasonably have maybe 1% doubt about the big bang. But that's not "unsure", by any metric.

Those who would advocate AGW need to provide a solid convincing answer to one thing: the temperature of every planet in the solar system has increased, not just Earth's. I think we can agree there are no humans on Venus and Neptune cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels.

Bullshit; there is no evidence supporting the idea that all planets are warming uniformly and at the same relative rate (which would be necessary for this idea). Any climate variations on other planets is perfectly well explained by proximity to the sun and natural environmental fluctuations. The warming of the Earth, on the other hand, is not explained by these factors. Besides, there's no evidence that the current epoch of warming of the Earth has tracked solar output (in fact there's no evidence that the sun's output has varied significantly, on average, in the past few millenia).

But it's curious how people would cling to the data on the climate on other planets - which is tenuous and sparse at best - and ignore the massive amount of evidence we have for Earth's climate, CO2 concentration, and the interlinking of these two.

And yes, ocean acidity is a huge problem and it's caused by CO2. In fact it's one of the main problems that our carbon emissions have caused.

Everyone skeptic of AGW needs to not only ignore basically all of climate science, but also the common sense argument:

The energy captured in coal, gas, and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. How, exactly, does one reasonably maintain an expectation that our releasing that in a matter of a couple decades should have no significant effects?

The energy captured in coal, gas, and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. How, exactly, does one reasonably maintain an expectation that our releasing that in a matter of a couple decades should have no significant effects?

Except that the energy being released by burning all that fossil fuel is trivial.

Just take this statement: "A mental illness is a medical condition that affects the brain."

Does mental illness affect the brain? Or is it caused by the brain? Is distinguishing the two even sensible? Is it a "medical condition" or a behavioral state? Is asserting that it is a "medical condition" a political statement that someone should take issue with (e.g., PTSD is listed in the DSM--is that a "medical condition"? Is depression following sexual abuse a "medical condition"? Is obesity a

I'm just wondering, do people distrust science, or do they distrust corporations? I trust science that it is capable of producing vaccines that are perfectly safe (well, as safe as a medical treatment can become, there's always a minimal risk involved, but in general the gain outweighs the risk by some margin). I don't trust corporations to not cut corners and endanger lives if they can get away with it while making a buck.

And they should. You can't go around screaming "mercury" like there's only one form of an element, and it always has the same property no matter what chemical compound it's part of. Imagine we had the same lecture about "sodium" (an explosive metal) or "chlorine" (a deadly poison). Can you BELIEVE they put sodium AND chlorine in our TABLE SALT! It's an explosive deadly poison! They're killing us all!

Oh, actually, I didn't get through the quackery far enough to see that chlorine came up in drinking water. This AC really hasn't ever heard of table salt.

Most of the stuff in that post is conspiracy level "they're lying to us and everything's a poison" diatribe. Do a little research and you'll see that 1) thimerosol wasn't in most vaccines and was removed from nearly all of them at this point because of the paranoia and FUD, 2) even when it was in some vaccines, it is mercury compound with no demonstrated physical harm, unlike, say, the stuff in old thermometers, 3) this "mercury is always evil" argument ignores any rational analysis of toxicity levels, disregarding how minimal the amount of mercury was in any of the vaccines compared to other general exposure.

Climate change: A theory about very complex system to model with the most famous proponent being a politician [with vested interests and suspect behaviour]. Of course there will be some doubters.

Thank you for summing up the core of the problem: too many people think celebrities are more believable than science, when it comes to being told what to think.

If Al Gore had "discovered" climate change, and was the only significant person promoting the theory with little convincing evidence, then people would certainly be right to doubt. But when Gore is only one notable figure of many that's echoing what the huge majority of climatologists have been telling us for decades, and when those climatologists have reams of peer-reviewed studies summarising multiple lines of evidence to back up their conclusions, then who gives a flying fuck about Gore?

Sadly, the answer is "the public", or more specifically, that sector of the public that don't want to accept any responsibility and would rather reframe the debate to be about celebrities and their credibility. Same goes with vaccines - much of the focus is on McCarthy instead of the evidence. Plus of course the Bible itself is probably the biggest celebrity ever, in a way.

Solution? Dunno. Stop clicking on every damn story with a celebrity in it, maybe, and perhaps then "news" outlets might not give such weight to their opinions. Won't help people face facts, but it will reduce the noise levels at least.

Age of the earth; Personally I think a global flood story fits the geology better than reliance on gradual processes. Perhaps triggered by a huge asteroid bombardment that hit the entire solar system (my fathers pet theory that he has been researching and may write a book on). Most of the geological record is made of very clean flat sedimentary layers with no signs of habitation or erosion. I believe the Fossil record was mostly sorted by water, sinking based on size or density not age or biological complexity. All those dinosaurs died out quite quickly after the climate changed or humans decided to hunt them. I have yet to see any evidence that compels me to believe that evolutionary processes can create new cellular machines. Yet animals change in various ways and adapt to external selection pressures quite rapidly. Most evidence of adaptation seems to be achieved though tweaking the parameters of existing features, or the destruction of existing cellular machinery.

Read up on Strata Smith. Basically your theory is similar to the theories before he noted that fossils were increasing in complexity as they went up the layers, and he could identify the layers based on the fossils he found in them and he could successfully predict the next layers above and below. This made him money predicting where coal would be found, which was big money back in Victorian england. So basically your theory was disapproved over a hundred years ago, assuming you take into account the evidence. If you ignore the evidence, well then, basically any theory can be proved. That is how religion works.

It IS inconsistent with a rapid deposit. The depth isn't correlated with density, or weight or buoyancy. Instead it's correlated with complexity. Organisms survive because they are still well adapted to their environment. Anyone with the slightest education in evolution would be able to answer that. Also, a few strata have isotopes that aren't found on earth anywhere else, but are found on meteors, and these strata perfectly partition fossil - just as if a large meteor broke up in the atmosphere and was distributed over a large area, somewhere between two ages with different animals. This is completely inconsistent with all the strata being deposited at once. Not to mention we have a very good idea of the rate of sediment deposits which is consistent with the estimated ages of the fossil records. Also consistent with documented volcanoe eruptions which have caused identifiable deposits. Also, the types of plankton and krill have changed over time in ways that leave different variants in different strata, but inconsistent with a sudden deposit, since these species all were essentially the same, and wouldn't be expected to differ in buoyancy. That's just off the top of my head - and I'm no expert. If you want to attack the science, at least learn some of it first.

Funny thing is two of the main three that pointed out the problems with the flood idea were clergymen. If your religion cannot survive contact with reality then it's a far weaker thing than theirs.The "fossils are from a flood" thing is not from the Bible but instead an extrapolation from it to try to explain fossils. If they are from a different cause that's only challenging the extrapolation and not the religion itself. The truly sad thing is the step backwards were branches of a religion founded long

I found this dissection [whale.to] of his first quote, when I searched for "Dr. Bernard Greenberg". Basically, the good doctor appears to have been most concerned with how the media was overstating the effectiveness of the vaccine.

The other two quotes may be real as well, but both come from anti-vaccination campaigns, so while the quotes may be real, they are less likely to be truthful.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is supposed to be. If your definition of safe is "completely devoid of any possibility of risk," then I wonder how you justify getting out of bed every morning. A more reasonable argument is that safety is always a relative measure. Injuries attributable to common vaccines are uncommon, permanent damage is incredibly rare, and death occurs at a frequency that can best be described as vanishingly small. On the other hand, many of the diseases that we vaccinate against often cause permanent damage or death, and weakening the herd immunity puts not only the individual at risk, but society at large. So, yes, there are some potential (though very small) risks to vaccination, but that does not mean that they are unsafe.

I guess you can call crossing the street in a crosswalk safe. Some people do get run over and killed but most come out OK. Not as safe as simply not walking around lots of cars. But safer than jaywalking.

I guess you can call walking across a field safe. Some people do get hit by meteoroids and killed, but most come out OK.

Best way to describe the problem many people have with many theories I've seen yet. Kudos to you.

People confuse what science suggests with what science can prove. Those are different things. The first one may be right, but it could also be wrong due to unknown factors. The second is almost certainly write because (as a requirement to be actual science) its testable.

The article conflates two very different types of science. One is experimental: cigarettes cause cancer. That's a testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis. The scientific method can be used. Alternate explanations can be systematically disproven.

Then there's the science that says, "because X and Y are true, it makes sense that Z is true". Note that it does NOT say "therefore Z MUST be true", which is what the article is implying. Z is something like the story of the universe from Big Bang through inflation up to today, or the story of manmade global warming. "Science" can project itself in those directions and come up with some answers, but there is no scientific method on a narrative. There are no controlled experiments. Every alternate hypothesis cannot be evaluated. They are at best projections, models. They're not "truth" without faith.

That sounds a lot like Ken Ham's distinction of observational vs historical science.

How do you actually test that cigarettes cause cancer? A big observational study? Well maybe people smoke because they're stressed or not health conscious, and they have a natural per-disposition to lung cancer. Build it from theory? Sure the smoke causes these problems in the lungs that we would expect to cause cancer, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're causing the cancer.

Now how do we test the Big Bang theory? A big observational study? We can see things that look a lot like after effects of what a big bang would look like, but maybe we're misidentifying them. Theory? There's a lot of theory about the universe that suggests a big bang, but that could be a mistake.

Clearly the cigarette cancer link is a lot easier to demonstrate than the big bang theory, or AGW, but they're not really alternative types of science. At the end of the day all of science is a mixture of observe X, where X is either a constructed experiment or a data set collected from the universe, and develop a theory Y, where Y has to explain X and all the previous observations we've made.

Putting a bunch of cigarette smoke into a lung and expecting it to develop cancer requires "faith" in the same way that putting a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere and expecting it to develop warming does. The latter problem is a harder one no doubt, but it follows the same approach of incremental collection of data and development of theories to explain that data.

We have countless lungs to study. We have one (1) universe, and one (1) atmosphere. There is no repetability of the grand narratives, because there's a sample size of one, and we're in the middle of the "experiment". Completely different from studies on lungs.

The atmosphere isn't some single indivisible thing anymore than the universe,

What??

Notwithstanding other planets the atmosphere consists of multiple layers of atmosphere, different regions of the planet, different aspects like storms, rainfall, temperature, etc.

For instance CO2 warming doesn't just explain the earth getting warmer right now, it also explains that different layers of the atmosphere will warm to a different degree, it also explains past warming events.

you aren't going to find a climate scientist who specializes in the atmosphere anymore than you find a physicist who specializes in the universe.

What???

I think you misunderstood what I meant, they don't specialize in 'the universe' because the universe is actually an insanely vast and complex thing, they instead specialize in some arcane aspect of inflation theory.

The reason that matters is because you can repeat observations.

What???? Seriously, I hope this is a troll?

There is no proof of a multiverse, the atmosphere is within confined known space and measurable, science does have specialists, and I can repeatedly watch lightning come out of the sky but that does not mean Zeus throwing thunder because he's angry.

If this was not a troll... well the world is already in trouble so what's one more.

Your issue with the multiverse and specialist thing was a misunderstanding, similarly with the atmosphere I wasn't saying it was infinite, I was saying it was way too big and complex to treat as a simple thing.

The theory that Zeus threw thunder, if the atmosphere was as simple as a thing that made thunder then the only thing we could repeat was the observation that thunder happens. But we can test the Zeus theory multiple ways, we can fly up to the top of the clouds and see if a giant is hanging out up there, we can look at multiple clouds in different parts of the globe and see if there's more simultaneous lightning strikes than Zeus has limbs, we can check to see if lightning strikes correlate with sacrifices, or if there are other cloud characteristics that predict lightning. There is only one atmosphere but I just named four ways to test the Zeus theory, its not as simple as one atmosphere means one observation and no way to double check your theory, that's why the observational vs narrative model is false.

You sir are an idiot. And your mod +5 insightful shows the scientific illiteracy even on Slashdot. There is only one scientific method, and it contains "testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis", also called theories. Yes we do have only one universe and only one earth, but what makes a scientific theory successful is a) the explanatory power and b) testable predictions. How can we test that the earth is in fact 4.5 billion years old? For example by searching for old rocks and date them with the radioacti

The article doesn't even go there. The polling is figuring out if the responder has heard of the topic being asked or not and is willing to give an answer. If the topic is relatively unknown then the responder tends to guess or claim ignorance (thus a 33/33/33/ split in answers). If the topic is a hot topic in in the news a lot but not really controversial (cigarettes causing cancer) then the responder gives the answer that is generally accepted, possibly just what they were told in school (thus an 80/10

The article conflates two very different types of science. One is experimental: cigarettes cause cancer. That's a testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis. The scientific method can be used. Alternate explanations can be systematically disproven.

Then there's the science that says, "because X and Y are true, it makes sense that Z is true". Note that it does NOT say "therefore Z MUST be true", which is what the article is implying. Z is something like the story of the universe from Big Bang through inflation up to today, or the story of manmade global warming. "Science" can project itself in those directions and come up with some answers, but there is no scientific method on a narrative. There are no controlled experiments. Every alternate hypothesis cannot be evaluated. They are at best projections, models. They're not "truth" without faith.

Global warming is a scientific result from the study of climate and the physics/chemistry governing the climate system. Fourier came up with Greenhouse theory in the 1820's and the first climatological model to show anthropogenic global warming was developed by the father of of physical chemistry Svante Arrhenius in the late 1800's, long before computers came on the scene.

No scientific method? No controlled experiments? Have you ever cracked open anything other than an elementary school textbook? And you se

No, he will be modded down for claiming something practically all the evidence says is false. And quite rightly so. Ignoring evidence because you can't understand it or because you don't like the consequences is not "questioning theories" - it's being lazy and/or dishonest.

You are Glen Beck-ing again. Asking questions is fine, but when you don't listen to the answers, you are a muppet. Sorry - senior system engineer/architect/muppet.

There is a metric shit-tonne of evidence for AGW. Every single question you have has already been asked, and already been answered. You suck at science, but your ego thinks you don't, hence you being on slashdot looking like a muppet to everyone. If it's as easy to disprove, spend a lazy afternoon doing so, and collect your Nobel prize. Go o

It can be said that: Under the conditions for which we need a working model, this 'Big Bang' hypothesis behaves in a way that consistently explains our extrapolations from observable phenomena. It also introduces some inconsistencies when take as a factual occurrence, when we introduce additional extrapolations from different phenomenal observations at quantum level. For those, notions such as "time" or "location" seem to be irrelevant, if not non-existent. This demolishe

I don't think that's even the point. If people doubted the big bang because they carefully considered the arguments and found some flaws that made them doubt it, that would be fine. They doubt it because they can't imagine the terms involved, because a religious book says it isn't true, or mainly just because they don't want to think about it. For the same reason that people think low frequency radiation from their computer is dangerous but Gamma radiation from water at a hot spring isn't. For the same reason people use IE instead of Firefox or Chrome. It usually isn't that they've educated themselves and weighed the evidence - it's that they can't be bothered - and yet at the same time, they feel a need to express their uneducated opinion.

Anecdotal Evidence/Case in point: A friend of a friend who lives in Kansas, USA started trying to buy up bottled water after the Tsunami incident in Japan. Because, you know, the water in the US was going to be contaminated soon. Riiight. Here I live in Tokyo and the water is generally safe, but the water in Kansas was to be undrinkable. Yet he was going to solve this by somehow buying enough water to last a lifetime? I guess food wasn't to be affected. People are just, in general, stupid and illogical - and it doesn't seem to bother many of them.

People in society need to start doing two things:1. Educate themselves so that they can do some critical thinking about the world in general and enlarge their world view. Start actually caring about things other than which celebrity is cheating on who.2. Recognize when you don't know and don't care to put forth the required effort and defer to the experts instead of talking bullshit. Sure, the experts may be wrong occasionally - especially about models of the universe or financial predictions - but they have in general a much better chance of knowing what they are talking about than you do, if you can't be bothered to do #1 above.

I'm a scientist, but not in astrophysics or a (remotely) related discipline.

At some deep level, I "doubt" the big bang theory because it seems to me that it is not something that can really ever be tested, simulated, experimented with, so we have n=1 observational data at best, and building causal theories on n=1 observational data is tricky; and on another level I "doubt" the theory because I don't know the literature or even really understand the phenomenon and I have no clue what the scientific evidence for and against it are. "They" say that it is the currently accepted theory, but what does that even mean? Why would I not doubt it?

All that said, I don't believe that the theory is false, I just accept that "other scientists" know what they are doing so as a body they are probably right if they accept a model. But I don't like accepting things on authority, I like understanding why something would be the case, and I don't have that understanding for big bang theory.

[at least with other "grand theories" like tectonics or evolution I have some understanding of the process involved and the evidence that lead the scientific community to accept it (e.g. the magnetism 'bar code' for tectonics) and it can be observed somewhat in real life (the functioning of current species, the shape of continents. And let's not even talk about flat earth, young earth, intelligent design and other complete hogwash]

N=1? You believe in Plate Tectonics, even though there is 1 Earth, but not the Big Bang because there is only 1 Universe? There are many reasons that lead to the conclusion of the Big Bang. The Doppler effect and Fraunhofer lines lead to the conclusion that everything in the Universe is flying away from our Galaxy. They had to start somewhere. If everything was once in one place, it would have been very hot, and you could predict that temperature. If the universe was that temperature at one time, the black

FIRST, we need to eliminate the premise put forward by Newsclowns (AP) , as obvious filler, that Americans do not accept scientific fact.In every link in the story I clicked , the premise is fueled by an apparent inability to distinguish between fact and theory. Further, the Newsclowns story was manipulated by a concrete inability to distinguish the meanings of words like; think, feel, believe and know, all separate entities with distinct meanings of their own.While this is fine for making money, selling ti

I don't think that's even the point. If people doubted the big bang because they carefully considered the arguments and found some flaws that made them doubt it, that would be fine. They doubt it because they can't imagine the terms involved, because a religious book says it isn't true, or mainly just because they don't want to think about it.

Point of order: Before anyone drags the eevil Xtians into the argument, the "Big Bang" theory was originally formed and promoted by not only scientists, but one of its pioneers (who reconciled Einstein's theories to it) was a Catholic Priest [wikipedia.org] (who happened to also be a physicist and professor of same).

Why do I mention this? Well, given that the largest single Christian denomination on the planet (by far) involves Rome, and has *zero* problems with established and credible science (and has historically often

Well, yes,... - but what you are saying is nothing more than what all scientists agree on: that all theories are models limited by our understanding and observattions. The big bang model is a proper theory, by the way: a hypothesis, that has produced predictions, none of which have been falsified. And it is amazingly accurate for such a long shot. We have very little reason to doubt that something very much like a huge explosion happened around 13 - 14 billion years ago; where the doubt creeps in is some time before inflation. That is no surprise, since we, as scientists, are working within the limits of our observations and can only speculate about what we can't (yet) observe.

I'm not convinced about what you say about time and location, or measurements; for one thing, we still don't have a clear understanding of several of the fundamental concept we use. For example, why does time seem to be so different from other dimensions? Why does the speed of light seem invariable? What is a particle? And a field? And mass, electric charge,....? Just because we have a mathematical form to fit these observables into, doesn't mean that we actually understand what they are.

There's a big difference between someone who doubts the big bang because they evidence isn't conclusive and it's just the best hypothesis we have right now and someone who doubts the big bang because an 1700 year old book says a sky man created the earth in 7 days.

The former has doubts because their mind open to other possibilities, the latter because their mind is closed to other possibilities. Doubt is really the wrong word for the latter, but they like it because it allows them to get a word in to rational conversations and once that happens, well you know the old saying about arguing with an idiot.

The scientific process requires that alternative (or unpopular) theories that seem to be supported by experimental observation be tolerated and given due consideration. Calling people names is the antithesis of the process. Maybe they are dead wrong about the steady-state theory of the universe, and/or maybe the big bang theory is dead wrong. Science allows for the possibility that the unlikely is true and the likely is false. To me, this is the maddening thing about general apathy/hostility to science; what science considers a strength (always allowing for new evidence to contradict current generally accepted theories), un-science (for lack of a better term) considers a weakness. Some people are so consumed by the need for absolute truth that they dismiss science out of hand, because by definition science defies the concept of absolute truth. They can't handle the fact that some things can't currently be explained fully, it's too much grey for them. The universe is a complicated, subtle, and unimaginably diverse place, with laws of physics that may not even be consistent in all locations.

Unless of course you think the more complex theory full of mysterious unobservable entities like dark matter is correct and better uses Occam's razor.

Well, yes. There is no evidence at all supporting the Electric Universe folderol and none of the predictions that it makes come true. For that matter, most of them are impossible. On the other hand, the current construct is internally consistent, can make predictions that work, and is supported by a couple of centuries of observation. So-called 'dark matt

I don't think that's something that's particularly easy to measure. I agree that pretty much every country has a large number of stupid people and a large number of intelligent folk. To suggest however that the ratio of intelligent to stupid is better is in the US than everywhere else however is pushing it a bit.